Q&A: Question Regarding Independence Day Prayers
Question Regarding Independence Day Prayers
Question
Based on your view, as you have defined yourself several times as a "religious Jew and secular Zionist," does that find expression in the fact that on Independence Day you pray the regular prayers and not the festive ones? Friends of mine who identify as "Leibowitzians" have the practice of praying completely regular prayers on Independence Day [including Tachanun], yet they are happy on that day and celebrate it in non-religious ways as a national "secular" holiday, but without any religious meaning and with no change at all in the prayers [some of them live in communities where there is no Haredi prayer quorum available, so they pray individually and do not come to the festive prayers in their synagogues].
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Do you also follow their practice regarding the prayers? a0
Answer
I say Hallel. That is the response of a religious person to a secular event that benefited him in his life. There is no need at all to assume that the State or its establishment has religious significance in order to give thanks for it and not say Tachanun. Is being saved from a car accident a religious event? It is exactly like the way I make a blessing over eating or after going to the bathroom. The same applies to Tachanun. In my opinion your friends are mistaken in the separation they are making. I explained this in articles and brought the example of the rabbi of Ponevezh, who practiced like Ben-Gurion (he did not say Tachanun, but also did not say Hallel).
Discussion on Answer
It's hard to deal with foolish pietists. What always surprises me is how the greatest revolutionaries have foolish followers who do not dare to be revolutionaries against their own rabbi. Strange, but apparently many of us have an instinct for discipleship and an urge to appoint a rebbe over ourselves whose qualities are never questioned. I won't repeat here once again the distinction between the two types of Hazon-Ish followers.
http://www.leibowitz.co.il/leibarticles.asp?id=14
Leibowitz's opinion on Independence Day is a bit more complex than the way my friends presented it.
He writes things very similar to what I wrote to you. True, he distinguishes between the blessing of Shehecheyanu and saying Hallel or reading the haftarah, and I'm not sure that distinction is relevant. The essence of the matter is that there is room for a religious response even toward events of secular significance, exactly as I wrote.
Thank you for the answer—I just remembered that in a lesson before Independence Day in the kollel you spoke about there being a difference between sacred and mundane, and that the Torah and Jewish law do have something to say about the mundane and about how to relate to it, but it still remains mundane and not sacred. You spoke about this in connection with your attitude toward the State, and based on the words of the Sages about how they established a holiday on the day they abolished the mention of Heaven's name in legal documents, because according to you that writing of Heaven's name in documents created a blurring between the sacred and the mundane.
My Leibowitzian friends whom I mentioned simply go in a very sharp line—too sharp in my opinion—of separating the sacred from the mundane, and more generally of a very rigid halakhic formalism, which they see as the path of the one they regard as their teacher and rabbi, Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Once I asked one of them whether on Tisha B'Av he says the prayer "Nachem" in its original and usual wording, or in one of the alternative versions composed after the liberation of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, without the descriptions of destruction that do not fit present-day Jerusalem. That friend answered me that although in his opinion the regular version is not relevant in terms of its content, he says it because "that's the text that has to be said," and that from his perspective the entire prayer is a formal ceremony with "ceremonial rules" that have no substantive meaning beyond the recitation of the traditional text itself that was instituted to be said, and in general he is not interested at all in the content or the meaning of the prayers.
This is an especially rigid halakhic formalism, which it seems to me even the most conservative halakhic decisor would not follow, but my friends claim that this was Leibowitz's approach, and they see themselves as following in his path.